Wi-Fi networks will carry almost 60 percent of smartphone and tablet data traffic by 2019, said Juniper Research.
Global data traffic on smartphone and tablets will be increasing 4-fold to over 115,000PB (Petabytes) by 2019 against under 30,000PB this year.
Offload addresses the issue of patchy coverage and has the potential for creating new services such as VoWi-Fi (Wi-Fi Calling) and to increase the usage of existing 3G/4G services.
Wi-Fi offload brings challenges to Operators of effective deployment and ROI. “Telecom operators need to deploy own Wi-Fi zones in problematic areas or partner with Wi-Fi hotspot operators and aggregators such as iPass and Boingo,” said Nitin Bhas of Juniper Research.
Telecom operators are converting residential customers to community hotspot providers, especially in the US. Wi-Fi service provider iPass has nearly 40 million community hotspots in 2014 and expects this to more than double this year to nearly 90 million.
Mobile data traffic generated from devices including smartphones, feature phones and tablets will exceed 197,000PB in 2019. Global smartphone data consumption will be nearly twice the amount of tablet traffic in 2015.
Indian subcontinent is forecast to witness higher growth rates and increased market share of the total mobile data traffic over the next 5 years; with operators in India already witnessing close to 100 percent y-o-y growth in data usage.
North America and West Europe will together account for over 50 percent of the global mobile data being offloaded in 2019.
